Maybe it's because anything before the Renaissance was MedievalMorons, everything invented between World War I and World War II was created by the military and everything from 1950 onward was made by corporations or universities, so they need people to build stuff in a setting with technology but nowhere to buy said technology.

Maybe it's because of the sheer number of inventors in the Industrial Revolution, like Thomas Edison, Robert Fulton, Nikola Tesla, Charles Babbage and George Stephenson.

Maybe it's due to RuleOfCool.

For whatever reason, there is often at least one GadgeteerGenius or MadScientist in the main cast of any series set in a SteamPunk or GaslampFantasy setting. The majority of those don't stop there and make inventors, mad scientists, mechanics, gadgeteers and other masters of technology/{{Magitek}} as common as trees in a forest!

Note that this is what this trope is about. If there's only one GadgeteerGenius or MadScientist in a work, it's not this trope. If, however, there is a high ratio of normal people versus tech experts - 3 {{Muggle}} characters for every 2 geniuses is probably the minimum - then it falls under this trope. If you've seen any of the series below and they don't fit this criteria, you probably know what needs to be done.----!!Examples:

[[AC:Tabletop Games]]* ''TabletopGame/{{Deadlands}}''* ''TabletopGame/{{Space 1889}}'' has rules for making inventions and plenty of suggestions for such inventions.* ''TabletopGame/{{Tephra}}'' places strong emphasis on building steamtech-savvy characters.

[[AC:Theatre]]* ''Theatre/TheLeagueOfSTEAM''

[[AC:Video Games]]* ''VideoGame/ArcanumOfSteamworksAndMagickObscura''* ''VideoGame/ProfessorLaytonAndTheCuriousVillage'' technically counts, since [[spoiler: of the five real human beings in the cast, three - Layton, Don Paolo and Bruno - are canonically {{Gadgeteer Genius}}es.]]* ''VideoGame/WorldOfWarcraft'' has two entire races, [[OurGnomesAreWeirder gnomes]] and [[OurGoblinsAreDifferent goblins]], with this as their exclusive [[PlanetOfHats "hat"]].